The Billionaire's Second-Chance Bride

Chapter 15: Separate Rooms

The storm arrived over Manhattan just after nine, rolling in off the river with rain that rattled the penthouse windows and wind that made the glass hum. Lily was in her studio corner, sketching by lamplight, when the lights went out.

For a moment the apartment was completely dark, except for the bruised purple light of the storm outside. Then Adrian's voice came from the hallway, calm and slightly amused.

"Power's out for the whole floor," he called. "The building says it could be an hour. Possibly two."

Lily sat very still in the dark, her pencil in her hand, and listened to the rain. She had always liked storms. In Rosewood House, storms meant Margaret lighting candles and making tea, and the whole small house going golden and quiet. Here, in a penthouse full of expensive darkness, a storm felt like something else: an interruption, a c***k in the routine.

"Are you all right in there?" Adrian asked, closer now.

"I'm fine," she said. "I just can't see my sketch."

A match flared in the doorway, and then a candle flame, small and steady, in Adrian's hand. He set it on her worktable, and the corner came back to life in warm, flickering light — the pencils, the paper, the dress form standing like a patient ghost.

"Emergency supplies," he said, setting down two more candles and a box of matches. "Rosa keeps them in the kitchen. I believe this is the first time anyone has actually used them."

"Thank you," Lily said. She lit the second candle herself, and the room doubled its glow.

Adrian did not leave. He stood in the doorway for a moment, and then, as if making a decision, he pulled up the spare stool and sat down across from her, the candlelight between them.

"Do you mind?" he asked. "My study is pitch dark, and I have nothing to read by. I'd rather sit here than stumble around in the dark like a man in his own house."

She did not mind. That was the problem. She did not mind at all, and she knew she should.

They talked, the way people talk when the lights are out and there is nowhere else to be. About the scholarship, and the student with the portfolio, and whether one gown a year was enough. About Margaret's house in Maine, and the way the sea sounded there in October. About nothing important, and then, gradually, about things that were.

"I never asked," Adrian said, turning his candle slowly in its holder, "what your first design was. The very first one. Not the best one. The first."

Lily laughed, surprised. "A dress for my grandmother's birthday. I was sixteen. I made it out of an old curtain, and it was hideous, and she wore it to church anyway, and told everyone I was a genius."

"She sounds like a formidable woman," he said.

"She is," Lily said. "She raised me after my parents died, and she never once made it feel like a burden. She made it feel like a choice. Like I was someone worth choosing."

Adrian was quiet for a moment, the candlelight moving across his face. "My father used to say that about my mother," he said. "That she chose him, every day, even when the company made it difficult. I didn't understand what he meant until I was much older."

"And now?" Lily asked, before she could stop herself.

"Now I think he meant that love isn't a feeling you fall into," Adrian said slowly. "It's a decision you keep making, even when it's inconvenient. Even when it costs you something."

Lily was quiet for a moment, watching the candlelight move across the table. "Is that why you took the company?" she asked. "Because your father needed you to choose it?"

Adrian nodded, slowly. "When my father fell ill, the board was already circling. Someone had to step in, or everything he built would have been carved up by men like Marcus. I chose the company. I don't regret it. But I gave up other things to make that choice, and I don't pretend otherwise."

"What things?" she asked, softly.

He looked at her, and for a second she thought he might say it — whatever it was, whatever lived behind his careful, controlled face. Then he shook his head, just slightly, and smiled a tired smile.

"Time," he said. "I gave up time. Time to draw, time to travel, time to sit in a studio pinning muslin with someone who swore at her seams. Ordinary time. The kind you don't miss until it's gone."

Lily felt her throat tighten. She remembered that studio, and the boy who had sat beside her, and the way she had refused, five years ago, to let him rescue her when his father's illness pulled him away. She had been proud then. She was still proud. But sitting in the candlelight, listening to him talk about ordinary time as if it were a fortune lost, she wondered what her pride had cost them both.

"You didn't lose all of it," she said, before she could stop herself. "You're here. In the dark. With candles. That's ordinary time, isn't it?"

"Yes," he said, very quietly. "I suppose it is. And I suppose that's why I don't want to waste it."

Lily looked at him across the candles, and felt something in her chest tighten. This was not contract talk. This was not a performance for June or the board. This was a man in a dark apartment, telling the truth because the lights were out and there was no one to perform for.

"That's a dangerous thing to say to your contract wife," she said lightly, trying to make it a joke.

"I know," he said, and he did not smile. "But we agreed not to lie in this apartment. And right now, this apartment is lit by candles, and I don't want to waste the light on something false."

She held his gaze for a moment too long, and then she looked away, down at her sketch, at the ivory gown taking shape on the page. The candlelight made the pencil lines look softer, more forgiving, and she did not trust herself to keep sitting there, in the warm dark, with a man who kept telling her true things.

"It's late," she said, standing, her voice a little too brisk. "And the power could come back any minute. I should go to my room."

"Of course," Adrian said, standing too. "Separate rooms. That rule stands."

"That rule stands," she agreed, and walked to the doorway, and stopped, because she could not leave without saying something honest in return.

"Adrian," she said, "thank you for the candles. And for the corner. And for not making me feel like a guest in my own life."

He nodded, and she went to her room, and closed the door, and stood in the dark for a moment, listening to the storm and to her own heartbeat, both loud in the quiet.

She had retreated, as the rules required. She had kept the boundary, as she had promised herself she would. But as she lay in bed in the dark, listening to the rain, she heard something through the wall that made her sit up, her breath catching in her throat.

Adrian was on the phone in his study, his voice low and careful, the way a man speaks when he does not want to be overheard.

"No," he was saying. "Not yet. She isn't ready to know."

There was a pause, and then, even quieter: "I know what it will cost me when she does. I'll pay it then. Not tonight."

Lily lay very still in the dark, her heart hammering against her ribs. She isn't ready to know what? What was Adrian hiding, behind his rules and his candles and his true things told in the dark? And why did his voice, saying those words, sound less like a man keeping a secret and more like a man afraid of losing something he had only just found?